For Revathy, a front-office employee at a multi-storey corporate office, the mere mention of International Women?s Day gets a prompt response, ?It?s not that everyday needs to be celebrated as Women?s Day, but it?s about every woman who deserves celebration!? Successful women such as Hillary Clinton, Martha Stewart, Kiran Bedi, Kalpana Chawla and the likes are the poster faces for the new age working women. But it?s women like Revathy who deserve more than just a day of appreciation. For instance, Standard Chartered Bank, the first international bank in India to launch two all women branches in Delhi and Kolkata. Head for Standard Chartered Bank branch banking in India, Rajashree Nambair informs, ?These branches have an all-women staff from the manager to the guard. As per our customer feedback, the service at these two branches is the best.?
Who?s better at work? For Anju Talwar, Senior VP and Head, HR and Hiring, Genpact, ?It?s a woman at work who has to perform twice as hard to shine out. In Genpact, from 36,200 employees across the globe, 45-48% of employees are women. In terms of deadline, I never had an opportunity to say that a female employee has not met the deadline.? So women do meet the deadlines and are considered more efficient. Yet they have to face all kinds of discriminations. And their ability to become leaders at work is often questioned. Explains Talwar, ?To hold back women employees, placing them at senior level positions helps a lot. We have senior leaders in legal, operation, training and the HR department.?
Men and women differ significantly in their preferences for a boss, if given a choice. Many women choose female bosses as they are more considerate because they go through the same household chores, issues and professional work. But for Abhilasha, a woman employee who has worked with both the genders says, ?It?s worse if your woman boss is in high temper. But a male boss subconsciously maintains the decorum that he is talking to a lady.? It is also believed that visibility of women in BPOs, public relations (PR), aviation sector is more. Sushma Rana, HR and training head, Hanmer MS&L, informs, ?We don?t have a flexible timing, as the IT companies do. PR agencies can?t afford to have flexible timing. But we do consider in an emergency.? ?Our PR workforce is 70:30 (female:male), as we deal with communication. And women have always been better communicators,? Rana adds.
Creative instinct
In creative services, the ratio is 90:10 (male: female) and in event management, it?s 60:40 at Hanmer MS&L. Why is it so? Do females lack creativity? Rana answers, ?Most of the creative work starts after the feedback comes from the clients, which mostly happens after the working hours (post 8 pm). But for a woman, who poses a multi-tasking approach to strike a balance between work and home, she is unavailable to be at her creative best most of the time. But I don?t think they lack creativity.? The time has come for women to drive change even within their lives at home and make choices all the time, affirm women leaders. Talwar says, ?In our initiative for women, Genwin, we do informal networking and coaching and guidance through other senior women leaders.? Such networking is crucial as the ?way a woman would open up to a senior female leader is different from the way she opens up to a male leader.?
For more than two decades since the IT companies started operations in India, the female-male proportion has been low, resulting in a skewed gender pyramid. ?In early 2000, with a steady inflow, Infosys
Technologies? challenge was not only to retain women talent, but also planning for programmes to assist women to move into middle management positions,? informs Srimathi Shivashankar, Principal Diversity Officer, Infosys Technologies. The increase in women employees can be attributed to the mushrooming engineering colleges in 2003. ?Infosys has 34% of women workforce. With an increasing number of women joining engineering colleges, this was an opportunity for us to introduce diversity in the work place, and also meet the supply-demand requirements. The necessity to bring gender inclusive policies was felt to attract and retain the best-in-class engineers, bringing in gender sensitive policies for women,? adds Shivashankar.
According to a 2008 report by Assocham, ?Indian women are spending longer hours at their workplaces now, compared to the time they put in three years ago, to get an equal footing with their male counterparts.? Women working in sectors such as aviation, media, hospitality, banking, retail and IT are staying back late in office, partly also due to improved working culture, say experts. Shivashankar explains the impact of IWIN, which was set up by NR Narayana Murthy, Chief Mentor-Infosys, in 2003, ?Women are included in task forces set up for conducting organisation-wide events. The women work force has grown from 19% in 2003 to 34% in 2008.?
Is it the woman who wants to work from home or is there a trend shift? Talwar cites an example, ?We launched a policy a couple of years back, Work From Home, thinking more women would opt for it. But when we did the tabulation, the outcome was men who?d opted for it.? Are the headhunters listening?
